[Python-Dev] Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream (original) (raw)

Piotr Ożarowski piotr at debian.org
Wed Mar 2 15:29:18 CET 2011

[Allan McRae, 2011-03-02]

But is that not the whole point of adding the /usr/bin/python2 symlink. That way a developer can explicitly use a /usr/bin/python2 or /usr/bin/python3 shebang and have it portable everywhere. At the moment, Debian seems to be the major hold-up on that actually being a reality being the only major distro I could find that does not provide such a symlink.

Do you realize how many (still perfectly usable) scripts written in Python 2.x few years ago (and not modified since then) are out there? Do you realize how much work would it require to fix every single one of them to point to /usr/bin/python2 instead? Even if we'd start checking mdate and change it at build time automatically, there still will be way too many false positives... for no clear gain.

Piotr Ożarowski Debian GNU/Linux Developer www.ozarowski.pl www.griffith.cc www.debian.org GPG Fingerprint: 1D2F A898 58DA AF62 1786 2DF7 AEF6 F1A2 A745 7645

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